Now we understand Paul Krugman

Wired: You’ve said that you recently agreed to write a new introduction to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. What will you be talking about in your introduction?

Paul Krugman: The background story is, I read Foundation back when I was in high school, when I was a teenager, and thought about the psychohistorians, who save galactic civilization through their understanding of the laws of society, and said “I want to be one of those guys.” And economics was as close as I could get. Those are pretty unique novels — they really are structured nothing like even the great bulk of science fiction, because they are about how social science can be used to save humanity.

Like all liberals, he wants to control society LMFAO. How can this guy be considered remotely credible? The guy has lived his entire life in Fantasy Land spending most of his hours bashing his rival political party.

" I was then and still am an unabashed defender of the welfare state, which I regard as the most decent social arrangement yet devised"

"In a 2003 article, The Economist noted that Krugman's critics argue that "his relentless partisanship is getting in the way of his argument". The Economist also wrote that the vast majority of Krugman's columns feature attacks on Republicans and almost none criticize Democrats, making him "a sort of ivory-tower folk-hero of the American left—a thinking person's Michael Moore".[17]

Liberal journalist and author Michael Tomasky in The New York Review of Books stated "Many liberals would name Paul Krugman of The New York Times as perhaps the most consistent and courageous—and unapologetic—liberal partisan in American journalism."[176] New York Magazine called Krugman "the leading exponent of a kind of liberal purism", while liberal historian Michael Kazin has opined that Krugman’s account of the right succumbed to the Marxist flaw of false consciousness."

"Economist and former United States Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers has stated Krugman has a tendency to favor more extreme policy recommendations because "it’s much more interesting than agreement when you’re involved in commenting on rather than making policy."[177]

"According to Harvard professor of economics Robert Barro, Krugman "has never done any work in Keynesian macroeconomics" and makes arguments that are politically convenient for him.[178] Nobel laureate Edward Prescott charged that Krugman "doesn't command respect in the profession", as "no respectable macroeconomist" believes that economic stimulus works"

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams.

So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.

For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.

What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.

How is that possible? Isn’t Mr. Obama a big spender? Actually, no; there was a brief burst of spending in late 2009 and early 2010 as the stimulus kicked in, but that boost is long behind us. Since then it has been all downhill. Cash-strapped state and local governments have laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers; meanwhile, unemployment benefits have been trailing off even though unemployment remains extremely high.

Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much though not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.

That same obstructionist House majority effectively blackmailed the president into continuing all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that federal taxes as a share of G.D.P. are near historic lows — much lower, in particular, than at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

As I said, for all practical purposes this is already a Republican economy.

When they are relevant I will post them in several threads. Thanks but no thanks to the your self righteous policing activity.
Look back at Mr. Krugman's economic predictions from 2008 and 2009. Pretty damn accurate.

When they are relevant I will post them in several threads. Thanks but no thanks to the your self righteous policing activity.
Look back at Mr. Krugman's economic predictions from 2008 and 2009. Pretty damn accurate.

Rush Limbaugh is way more incendiary and prone to lying.

"Self rightous policing activity"? Well, sorry you missed the point, but I was talking about redundancy. But we all know that's a tactic of the left. Keep saying it and maybe it will come true..............